Day -100 : Let The Adventure Begin

El Nino in California

Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Miles to go: 2,663

April 28 is one hundred days into the future. April 28 is my planned Pacific Crest Trail start date. I have one hundred days to prepare and plan. I feel very unorganized and scattered. I have begun to realize that this trip is way outside of my normal planning capabilities.

I remember when I set the goal to hike the entire PCT way back in 2013. I set it because it was a BHAG, a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. I had never really set any personal goals that were outside of the capabilities that I thought I had at the time. By definition, a BHAG is something beyond your comfort zone, a huge daunting goal, perhaps beyond your abilities. Now as I arrive and the one hundred day marker, I am really beginning to feel the reality of it.

Way back in 2013 it was far enough into the future that I didn't really have much to do to prepare. Now I am starting to feel, "Oh man, there are a lot of things that I don't know!" I think that is the hardest thing for me; dealing with the unknown. While I think that this aspect of my goal will be 'good for me' as far a personal growth, I feel strangely unhooked from my normal self. I am having to make decisions without understanding the ramifications. I am finding I have to operate from a different part of my brain.

I am a very routine oriented person, I love routine! I like my life and the routine of it. Get up, make coffee, drive to work, work, drive home, eat dinner, sleep, repeat. Over and over. It becomes a habit and requires very little thought. That way I have time to focus on and think about the small things that fit into the niches in my otherwise very structured existence. It's how I am wired and when I feel the most comfortable. This trip, even the planning and preparation for it, is throwing my routines out of kilter so I am having to learn to live in discomfort.

In addition to planning for my trip, we are in the process of selling our home and that is creating an even bigger sense of dis-location. For months we've had strangers tramping through our home evaluating and judging how we live (at least that is how it feels). Now we have buyers that appear to be serious so we are in the escrow process and working on getting rid of lots of extra furniture that we no longer need. Everything in my world is shifting and changing around me.

The only things that seem stable and comfortable right now are my relationship with my wife and our practice of  remaining in fellowship and connection with our friends at church. Everything else is being tossed around and jumbled into something new. Something that I don't even have a very clear picture of. This is definitely starting to feel like a real adventure!